Ordinary faith

Often, when we think about God, we focus on the extraordinary, the miraculous, the dramatic. Today’s reading from the Book of Revelation is just one example. The passage talks of a great multitude, from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before God’s throne. Angels and other wonderful and terrifying creatures are there too, worshipping God. There’s talk of a “great ordeal” through which those present have passed.

I think also of the burning bush and the parting of the Red Sea. Of the great flood and the fall of the walls of Jericho. I think of Jesus’s miraculous healings, and of his resurrection and ascension into heaven.

These sorts of stories are the favorite subjects of painters and poets and movie makers. They’re exciting. They’re important.

But, at least for me, they can be hard to relate to. I’ve never seen a burning bush or heard an angel’s voice—or at least not an angel that I recognized as an angel.

It’s easy to hear today’s reading from the book of Acts as another story of wonder, a tale about all the amazing things the apostle Peter was able to do. After all, Peter brings a woman back from the dead. It doesn’t get much more dramatic than that.

But let’s turn our eyes away from the dramatic for just a moment. Let’s set aside the miraculous. Let’s look just a foot or two beyond the spectacular and try to see the rest of the scene.

Just a few verses before this one, the author of the Book of Acts tells us this:

In this time, “the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.”

In that time of peace, a new community of Jesus-followers grew in the seaside town of Joppa, forty miles from Jerusalem. One of the disciples was a woman named Tabitha. She didn’t do anything extraordinary. Well, not anything miraculous, anyway—at least as far as we know. She cared for people in need. She made clothes for them. Maybe she worked to feed the hungry. Maybe she sat with the sick and dying. Maybe she used what money she had to help others. Maybe she spent time in prayer. She was probably a widow, but that’s not entirely certain.

We really don’t know much about her. Joppa was an ordinary town in which ordinary people lived. And Tabitha was an ordinary woman.

But I suspect that Tabitha is a better role model for most of us than the Apostle Peter is, even with all the power he seemed to have.

I can’t raise a woman from the dead. But I can do what Tabitha did. I can spend my life “devoted to good works and acts of charity.” I can help someone in need. I can comfort someone who is grieving. I can stand beside people the world tries its best not to see. I can do those things. And so can you.

It turns out that, almost all the time, that’s exactly what it looks like to follow Jesus. Day by day. Cook and serve a meal. Visit someone who’s lonely. Stand with the poor and the persecuted. Mop a floor. Do a load of laundry. Hold out a steadying arm.

Maybe no one will notice or remember the work you do. Maybe there won’t be angels singing or crowds marveling. But I can guarantee you this: Jesus will be with you every step of the way.

The things that matter most aren’t always the flashy things, the things that catch our attention, the moments historians write about.

A member of St. Paul’s recently told me about a book by a woman named Sharon McMahon. It’s called The Small and the Mighty, and it tells the story of people who changed the course of American history – but didn’t get much credit. I haven’t finished the book yet, but one of the first stories in the book reminded me of Tabitha of Joppa.

It’s the story of a woman named Clara Brown. She was born into slavery in the American south sometime around the year 1800. She married and had children, but her family was taken from her. She watched helpless as her young daughter Eliza was sold on an auction block.

After decades of slavery, Clara was finally freed at the age of 56. She was hired to cook for an immigrant family and moved with them to Kansas. She was here in Kansas during the Bleeding Kansas era of the 1850’s, which in many ways marked the beginning of the Civil War.

In 1859, Clara decided to go further west. She signed on to work for a wagon train, cooking for a caravan of men following the rumor of gold in the mountains. She walked all the way to Colorado. Once there, she started a business cooking for the miners and doing their laundry. And she came to care about them. She welcomed newcomers. Gave them a roof over their heads. She hosted prayer meetings. She cared for the sick. Once women started to follow men to the frontier, Clara served as a midwife. They called her the “Angel of the Rockies.” She helped start two churches.

Clara Brown didn’t do anything remarkable as the world measures such things. She never learned to read. She made a living cooking and doing laundry for rough-and-tumble gold miners.

Her life was ordinary. But it didn’t seem ordinary to the men she fed, to the women whose babies she delivered, to the strangers she welcomed.

She was a lot like Tabitha from the Book of Acts. Kind. Caring. Beloved by all who knew her.

For most of her life, Clara had one unanswered prayer. For fifty years, everywhere she went, she searched for news of her daughter Eliza.

Finally, at the age of 82, she got word that her daughter might be in Iowa. Clara couldn’t afford the train ticket, but her community loved her, and they raised the money she needed within days. And when she got off the train in Council Bluffs, Eliza was there waiting for her. Clara’s daughter and granddaughter moved back to Colorado with her, and when Clara died three years later at the age of 85, her family surrounded her.

The great, dramatic stories of the Bible have much to teach us about what God can do. But more often, a life of faith looks like the life Clara Brown led. More often, a life of faith looks like the life Tabitha of Joppa led.

And that’s the sort of life every one of us can aspire to.